If you are
involved in a private youth sports program which plays on publicly-owned
fields, diamonds, rinks, or courts, or are in local government, you have
probably been hearing a lot lately about what is being dubbed the "power
of the permit": the authority municipalities and towns around the country
are using to condition use of their athletic facilities by private programs on
compliance with state concussion safety laws from which they would otherwise be
exempt, or, in an increasing number of instances, to fill gaps in their state's
law.

Contrary to
what you may have been reading, however, the exercise by municipalities of the
power of the permit to require private sports programs to comply with
state-mandated concussion safety laws, or impose additional conditions beyond
those required by state law, isn't an isolated or new phenomenon: it's been a
growing trend for years.

I first recognized the power that a municipality has to control
the use of its fields two decades ago when I started a new travel soccer
program in my hometown and went looking for fields on which the teams could
play. I soon learned that permits to the town's fields were given out by the
director of the recreation department, whose practice had always been to simply
hand over permits for all the town's fields en masse to
the established travel soccer program, whose policy of exclusivity and lack of
concern for player safety were the very reasons that led me to form my new
program.

While my efforts to persuade the Board of Selectmen, the town
manager, and the Rec Department director to allocate permits in a more
equitable fashion, and to use their power to make sure that the programs using
town-owned facilities met minimum standards for inclusiveness and safety, fell
on deaf ears (we ended up being forced to use for our home games a dusty field
the high school had essentially abandoned), I returned to a discussion of the
"power of the venue permit" 10 years later in my 2006 book, Home Team Advantage: The
Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports, where I suggested that
one of the best ways for youth sports parents to improve the safety of
privately-run sports programs in their communities was to lobby their elected
officials to utilize that power to "reform youth sports by exercising
public oversight over the use of taxpayer-funded fields, diamonds, tracks,
pools, and courts, [and] deny permits to programs that fail to abide by a
[youth sports] charter" covering such topics as background checks, and
codes of conduct for coaches, players, and parents.

When I
presented the next year in Atlantic City to recreational department directors
gathered for the annual meeting of the New Jersey Parks and Recreation
Directors' Association, I spoke to the critical role they could play in
improving sports safety by proactively exercising the power of the permit to
require youth sport coaches to receive more training in first aid, CPR, and the
signs and symptoms of a concussion. It wasn't long after the speech that a rec
director contacted me about using the Power of the Permit in his town.

All politics is local

Since then, a growing number of communities across the nation
have utilized the power of the permit, not just to extend the reach of state
concussion laws to private programs utilizing municipally-owned athletic
facilities otherwise exempt from coverage (many of the concussion safety laws
enacted by the states do not cover non-scholastic sports programs), but to
impose additional requirements not mandated by state law. Here are just a few
examples:

In May 2012, the Brookline (MA) Park and Recreation Commission
enacteda policysettng standards
for the prevention and management of sports-related head injuries for all
organized youth sports programs offered by Brookline Recreation and those
groups permitted to use its facilities, which, the director of parks and
recreation, Lisa Paradis, told me in an interview, did not need the approval of
the Board of Selectmen because she closely modeled it on Ashland's policy. The
Brookline policy goes further than the Commonwealth's concussion safety law by
requiring baseline neurocognitive tests at least once a year, and by requiring
that concussed athletes be advised to get restwhile symptomatic. A permit holder's
failure to comply with the policy could subject the user to permit revocation.

In July 2012, two years before Virginia's concussion safety
law wasamendedto cover non-interscholastic sports
programs utilizing public school athletic facilities, the Town of Christianburg
(VA) Parks and Recreation Department enacted its own Youth Sports Concussion Policy.
Notably, unlike Virginia's law, the policy expressly empowers game officials to
remove athletes from play if they are suspected of having suffered a concussion
(a power that I have beenadvocating for many yearsgame officials be given, and a power
conferred on game officials by laws at the state level in only 12 states, and by rule at the high school level by the National Federation of State High School Associations), and requires that
coaches who disregard the safety and well being of a youth sports participant
as it related to concussions be subject to indefinite suspension (only Pennsylvaniaand Connecticuthave laws which penalize coaches for
violating their statutes)

Most recently, in May 2015, the City of Norwalk, Connecticut
enacted an ordinance requiring
private sports programs using municipal facilities to comply with a comprehensive
concussion risk management program, including a requirement that all coaches
take a concussion education course, a requirement absent from Connecticut's
concussion safety law, more concussion education of parents and athletes,
including an oral presentation (I have been advocating for such concussion education
meetings to be held before each sport season for the past fifteen years), and
requiring that a concussed athlete complete the six-step exercise
protocol recommended by most concussion experts before receiving
written clearance to play (only a handful of state laws, including California's,
expressly make this a requirement).

Filling gaps

As these
local ordinances illustrate, even if private sports programs are covered by the
state's concussion safety law, such laws often do not go far enough. For
instance, many do not require that coaches receive training in recognizing the
signs and symptoms of concussion, or require that parents be notified when
their child is suspected of having suffered a concussion, and few penalize
those who violate their provisions.

Especially
at the youth level, where trained medical personnel such as certified athletic
trainers are much less likely to be at games, and even less likely to be at
practices, it is coaches and game officials who will most often have to make
the initial remove-from-play decision in cases of suspected concussion. If no
concussion education of coaches is required by state law, and if game officials
are not empowered to remove athletes, I believe it is up to the municipality to
use the power of the permit to mandate such training and confer such authority.

As a
result, even if a private sports program that uses town fields, rinks,
diamonds, or courts is required to comply with state mandates regarding
concussion safety, I believe that there is a huge sports safety gap which,
absent voluntary implementation by a private sports program of youth sports
health and safety best practices, such as those we are pilot testing in Grand
Prairie, Texas this fall as part of our SmartTeamsTM program, can and should be
filled by a municipality by exercising its power of the permit.

"Safety Champions"
Needed

As with
legislation at every level of government, successful utilization of the power
of the permit depends not so much on concerned citizens committed to making
youth sports in their local community safer (although they are, of course, important) as on the willingness of governmental officials themselves to
sponsor bylaw changes and push for enactment, in other words, to serve as
"safety champions."

In the case
of Norwalk, Connecticut, for instance, it was Diane Beltz-Jacobson, Assistant
Corporation Counsel for the City, who, once a concerned mother brought the
issue to the attention of governmental officials, spearheaded the effort which
led to adoption of a concussion safety ordinance by the city. "Since my
own son had just sustained a concussion and I was aware that there is a gap in
the state laws that protect our youth athletes, I was motivated to draft the
bylaw," Beltz-Jacobson told me in an interview, a bylaw which she modeled
on the Brookline bylaw with her own enhancements. "Once I finished it and
presented it to the common council, they took a number of passes to strengthen
before they ultimately approved it."

For more on the Power of the
Permit, including a video of a presentation by Professor Doug Abrams of the
University of Missouri School of Law at a youth sports safety summit MomsTEAM Institute convened
at Harvard Medical School in September 2014, click here.

Has your community used the Power of the Permit to make youth sports safer in your community? We want to know about it! Send your information to editors@momsteam.com.

Brooke de Lench is Founding Executive Director of MomsTEAM Institute of Youth Sports Safety, Founder and Publisher of MomsTEAM.com, producer of The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer, and author of Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports (HarperCollins). You can follow Brooke on Twitter @brookedelench.

Note: This blog was originally published on Huffington Post on July 20, 2015.